NTU to build mini city on campus

SINGAPORE: The Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has unveiled an ambitious masterplan to transform its Yunnan Garden campus into a mini city in the next 15 years.

There is even a possibility of having a light rail system leading into the university.

The NTU's masterplan includes provisions for a possible light rail system, which it hopes could be up in 10 years.

Electric buses and electric bikes may also ply the campus roads. There will also be pedestrian walkways criss-crossing through a network of ponds and parks.

The heart of the campus will be a snaking structure -- called the Campus Centre -- which would feature cafes, shops, a pub and even a cinema, all located near academic and residential facilities.

By 2015, 5,000 more hostel units will also be built, creating enough space for all undergraduates to stay on campus if they wish.

Guida Moseley Brown Architects Harold Guida said: "We're suggesting that carparks can be removed and landscaping can be introduced.

"We're suggesting that certain kinds of rooms can be removed and changed very easily into residential accommodation, adding a new sense of life, activity, round-the-clock sense of purpose for these buildings, rather than turning them off at five o'clock (in the evening)".

NTU is home to about 33,000 students and 3,000 faculty and researchers, and the aim is to create more opportunities for them to interact, not just socially but also in the classroom.

Incoming president and provost Bertil Andersson said he hopes there would be more interaction in the university.

There will also be a bigger focus on inter-disciplinary collaboration, and the new Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, which will be up by 2014, is one such example.

Students will split their time between the new school at Novena and Yunnan Garden.

"They have to learn a little bit about management in the business school; they have to learn engineering, because my belief is that in the next 10 years, one of the most key areas for medicine is inter-disciplinarity between medicine and engineering," professor Andersson said.

And with a new CleanTech business park coming up nearby, NTU said it hopes it will create not just opportunities for industry collaboration, but also the critical mass for a new light rail system into the university.

THE Nanyang Technological University (NTU) campus will be remade in 15 years into veritable lifestyle hub with accents on informal learning spaces and more interactivity among its users.

It will have, for example, covered walkways and cycling lanes for electric bicycles, outdoor classrooms and lookout points, along with new-age tutorial rooms and a mini Holland Village-style student centre with restaurants, pubs and cinemas.

The academic buildings on the Boon Lay campus will be connected to the hostels through a new campus centre.

Five thousand more hostel places will be added to the 9,200 available now, and a light-rail system could thread through the campus in 10 years.

This masterplan, NTU's fourth and most ambitious since 1953, was outlined for reporters yesterday by NTU president Su Guaning and president-designate Bertil Andersson.

Dr Su said: 'It not only addresses the physical needs of NTU, but also acknowledges our need to adapt to changing pedagogical requirements and to develop facilities that can sustain new forms of teaching and research.'

SCIENTISTS from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have set up a new laboratory - the first in Asia - that aims to turn water into hydrogen fuel.

The new Solar Fuels Laboratory at NTU aims to create efficient and sustainable sources of solar fuel by developing a device that can extract large amounts of hydrogen from water using sunlight.

The energy-producing 'artificial leaf' technology can reduce help to reduce dependence on crude oil when perfected, NTU added.

Current technology requires huge amounts of energy to draw small amounts of hydrogen from water which makes it commercially unviable.

NTU's Solar Fuels Lab was officially opened by Professor Bertil Andersson, NTU's President-Designate on Tuesday. A seminar on solar fuel generation and artificial photosynthesis was also held in conjunction with the opening ceremony. The lab will be jointly managed by NTU's School of Materials Science and Engineering and the Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N).

'Nature has lots of wonderful ways to renew itself. We can learn a lot from Nature, if we look hard enough, to find sustainable solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems," said Professor Andersson, himself an internationally-renowned biochemist and pioneer in 'artificial leaf' technology.

Seriously this uni needs to spend their resources on integrating their FTs. There are just so many pockets of them that stick amongst themselves. Some anti-China grafitti appeared there last year.. When people don't integrate this is what happens and it could get worse.

They can come up with a mentor system, get foreign students to tag with local students for example. They seriously need integration.